YouTube has made billions of pounds through "rip-off deals" with the people who make the videos it broadcasts, Labour has claimed.

The comments by Tom Watson, Labour's Deputy Leader and Shadow Culture Secretary, are the latest sign Labour is planning to take on the big internet giants if it forms a Government.

He said: "Nearly every sector of our creative industries believes that it abuses its market power through the take-it-or-leave-it rip-off deals that it offers to creators."

Mr Watson also claimed that the business models of Facebook and Google - which owns YouTube - were connected to the closure of local and regional newspapers.

It follows a hard-hitting speech by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn about the future of the media last month.

Labour deputy leader Tom Watson (Image: Tom Oxley/PA Wire)

Mr Corbyn described firms including Google as "digital monopolies that profit from every search, share and like we make".

He threatened to impose "a windfall tax on the digital monopolies to create a public interest media fund" if they did not agree voluntarily to support public interest media and news publishers.

And he also suggested they could help fund the BBC, setting out proposals for a "digital licence fee .. collected from tech giants and Internet Service Providers, which extract huge wealth from our shared digital space."

The Labour leader said his ideas were not yet Labour policy but he wanted to see a debate about the proposals.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, said: "Google’s YouTube is now the No. 1 source of consumption of free music and video. It is estimated to have made £160 billion off the back of content and data created by others."

He later asked Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright whether it was healthy for Facebook and Google to have a "duopoly" on online advertising.

Read More

One of the challenges faced by the news industry is that it produces content which is shared online but only receives a small proportion of the income from advertising associated with it.

Mr Watson said: "300 newspapers have closed in the past decade and there are 6,000 fewer local journalists than there were in 2007.

"That is hardly surprising, given that two companies, Facebook and Google, control nearly 60% of global online advertising revenues, using content created by local journalists, playing their role in our democratic system."

He added: "The problem seems to be that the Government as a whole are either unwilling or unable to deal with the market dominance of the big tech giants.

"The Opposition believe that these companies are running ​rings around Governments, legislators and regulators.